Why We Ain’t Gonna Get Free in One Language | Jamila Craig | TEDxDelthorneWomen
[Music] [Applause] hey everybody I have a question for you what should be our language of Liberation I pose this question as a black queer us-born afro and non Latina language Justice practitioner the native tongues that I am ancestrally connected to are black English and Spanglish and I am fluent in standardized us English though it's not the most fun to speak all of these languages have been critical in my more than two decades working in human rights and social justice advocacy this is me interpreting during a tour of gory Island in senagal West Africa I interpreted into Spanish the tour guide was a senales woff speaker who spoke in English recounting the story of the estimated 20 million Africans who were brought from across Ross the continent to gory Island to pass through the door of no return prior to being shipped to the Americas and sold as property hundreds of years later here I am standing at that same door providing interpretation for black people who would not have understood this message were it only communicated in English so when I ask what should be our language of Liberation I mean this literally what language will we use to communicate to coordinate and to collaborate for those unfamiliar with the concept of language Justice the precise definition is always evolving the foundational principles of language Justice call us to create multilingual space that encourage the autonomy of people to choose and use the language that makes them feel most powerful these multilingual spaces don't privilege one dominant language but rather they're intentional about recognizing that language can cause us to both revisit our trauma and experience Joy but my language story began long before I knew anything about language Justice my language story began in a family of black English and English speakers my mama would say things like Lord willing in the creek don't rise as a very wordy way to say hopefully but because education was seen as something that could get you out of poverty help you move to a safe neighborhood and make sure that your kids could go to good school schools speaking proper English was always emphasized to me I didn't know it at the time but I was being taught when where and why I should code switch I should code switch in a job interview if I want to get that job I should code switch at school so that I can get good grades in many instances code switching was connected to work and education and things that were seen as protecting my Financial Security as a black language Justice practitioner I've also felt an entanglement of anti-blackness and push to code switch and language Justice spaces I can't tell you how many times I've met the disapproving glance of a fellow interpreter who's disappointed to find out I'm just black just black I've learned is what people mean when they find find out that my parents my grandparents and their grandparents were all born in what we call the United States there was the push to speak proper Spanish or the standardized version of any Colonial language there was also the way that interpreters could easily dismiss inaccurate interpretation for black people whose southern draw or Caribbean or Brooklyn accent was just too hard to follow that's why in 2015 when founding Jami linguists an organization whose name literally means Community I wanted to be intentional about mobilizing a community of folks who could center black language black culture and black identity in our practice of language Justice not to mention this just black interpreter can interpret for those Southern draws Caribbean accents and Brooklyn accents Spanglish and Jamaican pwa was part of my childhood too but I promise I'm not a jafin I grew up in and between two worlds one world was predominantly white and Suburban where I moved to for school that world was just 15 to 20 minutes across the bridge from my predominantly black and Latina hometown of Harford Connecticut yes there are black people in Connecticut language was always around me Harford was a community full of Jamaican and West Indian culture language was always around me but it was my father who sparked my interest in language learning he was was a panafrican born and raised in Brooklyn New York who had a love of languages but who as far as I know never learned to say much more than and he would say it like that too I fortunately had that spark for language learning before I ever entered a World Language classroom in seventh grade and I kid y'all not one young colonizer said to me [Laughter] I was choosing between Spanish and French and they said why would you want to learn Spanish what do you want to be a maid when you grow up yeah listen this was a critical moment in my language journey I was in seventh grade but in retrospect this was the first first time I made a tangible connection between language Liberation and pro black solidarity you see whether I was in Brooklyn with my father or B Harford I was looking at the complexions and hair types and body types of the latines in these neighborhoods and even though I didn't know anything about what we call afro laad back then I knew a lot of these Spanish and Spanglish speaking folks were black so when this colonizer said this to me I was like wait a minute I cannot let you disrespect my people like that I'm F to learn Spanish but seventh grade Spanish ain't help I didn't become fluent in Spanish until the age of 21 when studying at Howard University shout out to my B said you know I studied in a very surprising place for a self-professed panafrican I lived in Buenos irees for 6 months for those unfamiliar with Argentina it's not exactly known for having a lot of people who look like me but Argentina came through for a sister years later when I was moving to Maryland I was broke I promised I couldn't have got approved to pay attention I was a single mother I was a recent law school graduate and I was looking for a safe neighborhood with good schools for my daughter it wasn't passing the bar exam that helped me find a home it was speaking to the homeowner in Spanish explaining why my credit was so bad but I could definitely still get that rent in on time and I promise you that conversation hits different when you do it in someone's native language okay and guess where she was from buenos artina right she wasn't expecting me to say artina so M yes but anyway for me language learning became a core strategy for freedom fighting when I realized that my ability to speak truth to power in more than one language served me my family my Afro Colombiana child that I'm raising and my entire Community exponentially more than even my law degree studying Portuguese and French meant that in 2020 when people across the world were talking about police brutality in the United States I was in community with people who were concerned about State sanction violence against black bodies in Brazil in France in Colombia why because the same damn thing was happening there too whether I was practicing and speaking about black feminism or just ways to style language learning G gave me a more tangible connection to my values for pro black solidarity because it deepened my profound human and authentic connections with people who shared that value what I've learned navigating the world in this black multilingual body working at the intersections of race and language for more than 20 years is that when it comes to our Collective pursuit of Liberation both race and language intersect with literally everything everything there can be no Collective Liberation in an anti-black world we consistently see that the darker skinned people of this world suffer more when it comes to issues like disability Justice climate change wealth gaps hunger hunger and food insecurity transphobia reproductive Justice and so much more in a world with more than 8 billion people who speak and sign more than 7,000 languages mobilizing people around any of these intersecting movements is going to require a lot of languages y'all we ain't going to get free in one language what I'm asking is how can we be more intentional about integrating both Pro black solidarity and multilingual Community Building into our Collective pursuit of Liberation returning to that initial question what should be our language of Liberation obviously I somebody jumped ahead I know that's right it's coming I'mma get there obviously there's no one language we can pick in an equitable way and it is not practical for us to all try to know all the languages but what's our language of Liberation say it again all of them all of them so here's what we can do there's three things one we can learn at least one more language and I'm talking to my folks raised bilingual too okay whether that language is ASL Haitian Creole Ki we can learn to communicate in other languages Freedom Fighters like Maya Angelou James Baldwin Angela Davis Carter G Woodson and Shirley Chisum all learned to communicate in more than one language two we can put multilingual communication in the budget for those of us running organizations businesses Community groups we can make a plan for multilingual Community engagement and allocate money to make it happen it can't be an afterthought and last but not least three we can create more online content in languages other than English English as a spoken language represents less than 20% of the world's population but more than 54% of the World's Online content let's make sure that the communities we're mobilizing online are accessible to more people and more languages the revolution might not be televised but it will be multilingual gracias O Messi Asante J from my wallof speakers thank you